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Archive: December, 2011
Notes from the Weekend is a feature that sees the members of Team Meal Ticket compiling all the food/drink highlights uncovered during prime eatin' time, Friday to Sunday. (Friday to Monday this time, for the holiday weekend.) Consider this a place for good deals, great dishes, wicked cocktails, recipe triumphs (and tragedies), bizarro conversations and more. We're eager to share our notes, but especially excited to read yours.We encourage you to leave notes from YOUR weekend in the comments. Have at it! (View past NFTW installments at citypaper.net/notes.)
View galleryRan thru fam/friends of Lemon Hill (747 N. 25th St.) last night — this handsome new corner spot, spearheaded by Mitch Prensky of Supper and Mike Welsh of The Franklin, will open its doors to eager Fairmountians tomorrow night at 5 p.m. The interior is bereft of all sports-barrish traces of former tenant Lucky 7; it's now an uber-warm polished wood and exposed brick sitch, with the bar and banquetted dining room separated by a long wall, the kitchen staff holding court in the open pass on the far end.
You can call the joint a "gastropub" if it truly pleases you, but to us it feels more like a thoughtful neighborhood restaurant. Prensky's cooking downmarket takes on Supper-style food — pastrami-brined wings; housemade beer cheese and rillettes; oven-roasted fish; Prensky's fave patty melt — that wouldn't necessarily fit in on South Street but look quite comfortable here. The eats are complemented by a beverage program built by Al Sotack, who's come up with a 12-drink cocktail list comprising classics (Old Fashioned; daiquiri) and a couple drinks of the Franklin-ish persuasion (the self-referential "Fairmount Project," with Bluecoat, Bonal, Luxardo, lemon, house blackberry syrup and two kinds of bitters).
Lemon Hill will be open nightly from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., with the kitchen serving late; weekend brunch will launch in a couple weeks. Full food and cocktail menus after the jump.
The new-look Sidecar (2201 Christian St.), the end result of an expansion project we first noted nearly two years back, is ready to go — owner Adam Ritter is letting drinkers up into his second level, accessible via staircase from the beer bar's ground floor, as soon as the Sidey opens today at 3 p.m. Tricked out with tall windows, banquette seating and lots of custom wood work, this part of the Sidecar will cater more to eaters — the kitchen's now up here, and Ritter plans on using the space for beer dinners — but there's also the pretty walnut bar, which features the same dozen drafts as downstairs (just no hand pump). Adam Willner, who came over from Matyson to back up exec chef Brian Lofink (who oversees food at both Sidecar and Kraftwork), has helped expanded the bar's nightly specials considerably, and the offerings are only going to get more ambitious with the new elbow room. In a few weeks, Ritter adds, the newly multi-floored Sidecar will tweak its hours — they'll start serving at 10:30 a.m. every day, offering an abbreviated brunch-style menu before shifting over to dinner service.
Monday, December 19
Honest Tom's has opened its brick-and-mortar restaurant in West Philly.
Meet our new interns, Katie Linton and Alexandra Weiss.
East Girard Gastropub has taken over for Fathom.
Tuesday, December 20
Austin Texas, cream chipped beef, poutine, Joe Sixpack and more in Notes from the Weekend.
Han Dynasty is opening a new location on Main Street in Manayunk.
More on Rex 1516, coming soon to South Street from the owners of Jet Wine Bar.
Wednesday, December 21
Matt Zagorski's Hickory Lane is now open in Fairmount.
Portofino is reopening as Walnut Street Supper Club.
Thursday, December 22
Running down what's in CP's Dec. 22 food section, including Adam Erace's review of Il Pittore.
Friday, December 23
We asked seven Italians to explain the Feast of the Seven Fishes to us. Still don't really know.
There are two new happy hours at Birra.
- Though the Norwegian Butter Crisis has been eased, this guy named Tommy is here to remind us of the gravity of the issue. Never forget.
- Save yourself the embarrassment of having "the talk" with mom and dad — Time's Newsfeed explains where eggnog comes from.
- Meal Ticket's own resident Italian, Adam Erace, tells the bittersweet tale of a former pescaphobe's plight of the Seven Fishes for Gilt Taste. Don't worry, though. It has a happy ending.
- OMG. Ryan Gosling. omgomgomg. RYAN Gosling. Ryan GOSLING. Oh and some whiskey-drunk dude talking about Christmas and a sleigh full of puppies (see above).
- Austin Texas Butcher is a blog brought to you by Whole Foods Market's No. 2 butcher in the country, Reece Lagunas. At least that's what he told me re: his credentials. I'm not about question a dude who has access to sharp, sharp meat hooks.
- Two men opened The Baghdad Country Club as an alcoholic oasis in the Green Zone during the most violent years of the war in Iraq — "a place where you could avoid the roadside bombs, but not the mercenaries crooning Nickelback songs." Though it lasted only a short while, they're considering reopening it in the refurbished al-Rasheed Hotel.
- EpicMealTime and its creator, Harley Morenstein, has signed a deal with G4 to develop the viral vids into a TV show. A full 30 minutes of high-calorie, artery-clogging yelling!
Screenshot: funnyordie.com
The revamped Trestle Inn (339 N. 11th St.) picked a solid day to roll out brunch — they'll start serving theirs at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Jan. 1, providing an ace opportunity to soak up New Year's Eve excess and take preemptive measures against Two Street disaster in one beefy meal. Chef Travis Messman will do sweet likes housemade sticky buns and Nutella/banana crepes, plus savory stick-to-the-ribbers like biscuits and gravy, a full English and a bison bacon burger. Vegan/vegetarian options aplenty, too. Bar manager Jake Goldberg has developed a handful of brunchy cocktails, like Lulu Lost in Paris (gin, St. Germain, lemon, Champagne) and a host of different Bloody options.
Photo: Courtesy of The Trestle Inn
Food-fixated iPhone users now have a new hyperlocal toy to play with — Chefs Feed, a "mobile app cooked up with credibility" that takes restaurant and dish recommendations from chefs in major U.S. cities and places them in your touchscreen-savvy fingers. (Droid and BlackBerry versions are in the works.) The Philadelphia version, curated by Meal Ticket's own Adam Erace, launched the other day and is now available for free download. Erace surveyed 25 local chefs/professional food-type people, coaxing their five favorite Philadelphia restaurant dishes out of them, along with reasons why they picked them; each chef's picks are set up in a quickly browseable format (see above), complete with restaurant contact info, a quick link to a Google Map and so forth.
Right now, featured Philly chefs include Jonathan Adams, Pierre Calmels, Jennifer Carroll, Jose Garces, Georges Perrier, Mitch Prensky, Kevin Sbraga, John Taus, Marcie Turney, Marc Vetri, Peter Woolsey and others. Fifty more are coming, says Erace.
Gordon Dinerman has barely sliced the ribbon on his brick-oven pizza and Italian joint Birra (1700 E. Passyunk Ave.), but he's already decided to boost his booze program with big deals for after-work drinkers and diners. "The neighborhood has been so supportive since we opened," says Dinerman. To say thanks, he'll launch two happy hours — Mangia e Salute — starting on Dec. 27. Mangia will go from 4 to 6 p.m. and offer half-priced pies for dining in, starting at $4.50 and topping out at $8.50. (For the occasion, Dinnerman's running a new pizza — La Peperonata, with Anaheim peppers, long hots, Fresno chilies, fresh mozzarella, white sauce, and spicy capital — for $7.) For those who work later or just like to pretend that they do, Salute, Birra's late-night happy hour, runs from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. with deals on craft beers and wine, along with a $6 cocktail menu featuring drinks like a Ruby Negroni (Beefeater, Campari, Cockburn's ruby port, orange twist) and the Motoguzzi (Christian Brothers Brandy, Disaronno, fresh lemon).
For many Italian-Americans in Philadelphia, Christmas Eve dinner has followed a tradition their ancestors arrived from Europe: The Feast of the Seven Fishes. In general, the practice reflects Church doctrine requiring abstinence before a holy day of observation, in the same way Catholics abstain from eating meat on Fridays during Lent. But no one really seems to know, for sure, where the custom, in particular the number seven, truly originates.
Meal Ticket decided to interview seven Philadelphians who have carefully considered the tradition themselves — they are either Italian, of Italian descent, fish eaters, fish vendors, or all of the above. Our conversations yielded a sea of perplexed expressions, diverse and interesting conclusions and a complimentary ball of Mancuso's fresh mozzarella. In the end, it appears that we might be wise to allow the true meaning of the Seevn Fishes to remain a mystery.
- Adam Erace visits Il Pittore, where longtime SRO corporate chef Chris Painter finally has a kitchen to call his own. How does the subtly modern Italian cuisine fare in Adam's eyes?
- In Feeding Frenzy: New openings include Honest Tom's Taco Shop, East Girard Gastropub and Pickled Heron.
- In What's Cooking: a roundup of New Year's Eve restaurant options, including a.kitchen, Kanella, Barbuzzo and more.
- In news: Staff writer Isaiah Thompson shares the story of his family's cranberry bog in South Jersey.
- Also in news: Brian Wilensky discusses how SWEEP, the city's recycling enforcement program, affects small businesses like pizzerias.
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